Successful Large Project

Successful Large Project

We closed out a large project earlier in the year. We’ve been ecstatic, to say the least. Below is the approved right up that we posted on our LinkedIn page. Contact us! We look forward to helping you with your project!

Situation

Ohio State’s College of Engineering and Knowlton School of Architecture, in addition to being an innovative leader in engineering and architecture education, endeavor to fulfill the university’s land-grant mission. In order to increase efficiency in information technology (IT) operations, provide a consistent end-user experience and reduce technical barriers to interdisciplinary collaboration, the College of Engineering is undergoing a centralization of IT staff and resources. To accomplish this goal, one key IT consolidation initiatives was a consolidation of its Active Directory infrastructure.

To advance this integration and create the foundation for distributed IT services, a comprehensive design, implementation, and migration of Active Directory (AD) needed to take place.

User accounts consisting of pre­majors, majors, nonmajors taking classes, graduate students, visiting scholars, faculty, staff, student staff, and sponsored guests totaling more than 16,000 users to be migrated. Many users had accounts in multiple source domains, complicating the process of merging the users into one object.

Problem

The College of Engineering had 24 Active Directory Forests, most functioned separately and autonomously. Some of these Forests were administered centrally within the college, while others had IT staff directly assigned to support a particular unit’s infrastructure. This set up leads to divergent procedures, change management, maintenance, and design methodology. The configuration also lacks integration and trust, preventing users from accessing resources collaboratively across the college.

Another problem was how to consolidate. AD migrations are tough on their own. Migrating and merging with other domains into one domain made it more complicated. Considering that 24 source domains existed, the problem appeared to be a significant undertaking.

Vendor

Syllogistic Group was selected as the vendor of choice to architect, lead, and execute the domain consolidation process. Syllogistic Group’s experience made it a logical choice. Syllogistic Group brought in its partners, LenMar Project Solutions, and Tashlyn Group as primary subcontractors to help facilitate the migration. We also called upon Prosyntix to provide contractors with world-class knowledge in their niche specialties.

The Solution

Syllogistic Group’s understanding of large project teams and management of such teams allowed us to craft the right management structure to execute the AD migration project. LenMar, in concert with the college’s internal project manager, designed a project management framework that flawlessly enabled project success from the beginning. With a fast-paced schedule of 8 months, one-third of the time other vendors insisted that was needed, we knew that the resources on the project had to function as one team.

The Result

By becoming a partner and members of the organization’s team, Syllogistic Group helped consolidate the 24 domains almost effortlessly. Through continual process improvement, experience gained from the initial migrations was used to continually refine the environment and procedures to optimize the migration experience for upcoming migrations. The bulk of the migration issues consisted mainly of scheduling around very disparate schedules of each unit. We consolidated 24 domains, migrated or merged more than 20,000 user and computer objects. With each domain being completely separate, this was in effect 24 migration projects in 8 months.

Today, the college’s computer environment is leaner and more efficient than it was at the beginning of the project. This project was successful in many ways, yet, we feel most proud of the fact that the business units have expressed their appreciation at how their lives have been made easier by the successful completion of this project.